A Sad Millennial, Chronically Online \ I just want a hug \ You, a bad tattoo

A Sad Millennial, Chronically Online 

On Instagram, I forage for reels, 
pieces of mirrors, precisely reflecting my sadness.
And add them, millions of them, to my story, 
with careless madness, 
listening to Mitski’s Last Words of a Shooting Star, 
crying when she saying “a blood-sniffing shark”.

So the world knows I am sad, 
without me announcing I am sad. 
And stupidly, secretly, I hope,
someone will leave me a heart, kindly, 
a comment, friendly, or even a message, privately, 
asking me how I am doing (not my best), 
what I’d eaten for dinner (nothing), 
or if I’d gone out today for a walk (nope). 

And I am not talking about anyone. 
I am waiting for 
that one Instagram user 
who I unfollowed, 
who I know will never view my stories again, 
yet who appeared first in my search history, 
their ghost remaining.

I just want a hug

I just want a hug,
but he can’t stop talking before that. 
Jean-Luc Godard, Kurt Cobain, Milan Kundera, 
geopolitics, racial conflicts, the possibilities of a third World War,
and the status quo of women in the modern era.

I just want a hug,
but he can't stop touching after that.
My freshly washed hair, silver-hoops-attached earlobes,
unshaved armpits, little moles on my unappetizing flat chest,
and my inside, bursting with shame.

He opens the map of my body, flag-marks here and there,
his voice and fingers spreading in the room.
Before being hung up on the wall,
I remember that I just wanted a hug.

You, a bad tattoo 

On the stencil paper, a purple-lined butterfly;
on my skin, a black-inked moth,
softly poked, sweetly infected, a dear suffering. 
In my dream, you were more pleasing.

It is what it is, 
friends comfort me with washed, defeated smiles.
My skin itchy, my mind pitchy, 
I scream scream scream — 

Yet in no time, a new tattoo will flower,
darker, cooler, cost higher.
I have searched the design already:
what pattern, what colour, what meaningless beauty.

Maybe even more painful, 
I am not ready.